Friday, 21 February 2014

Preview| Strong Suit - Simulation

Nanoloop can be a hard medium to write in. The very nature
of its ‘looping’ can lead to lazier producers relying on it. Not to say that
many do, there are plenty of examples of Nanoloop users that go above and
beyond with the medium (shitbird, GLOOMS, Analog). But here, on his
sophomore release ‘Simulation’ written over 6 channels on an iNano, Strong Suit falls into the trap a program based on loops
can create: tedious, repetitious, simplicity.

Most of the melodies are atrocious, lacklustre placeholders
that act as vehicles for beats or interesting sound design. Whenever Strong
Suit finds a good melody, it’s used like a crutch, quickly stamping out all
enjoyment with repetition. ‘DFW’ begins with great beats but quickly knocks the
life out of itself with dull, pointless replication. ‘Pseudomoprh’ starts well,
sounding like old Henry Homesweet mixes via The Prodigy, but then ruins itself with the same faults. ‘Indy’ opens by repeating terribly written, bland
phrases. Some of the sound design is great, but the same dreary melody played
on different instruments doesn’t class as good song writing. ‘Rhode Trip’ would
have been a fantastic lounge jazz interlude if it didn’t stretch itself to the
point of breaking with more repetition. Etcetera, etcetera. What this leads to
is an album where its 40 minutes could easily be condensed to 10
without losing the breadth of ideas on show.

There are a few positives. The album spikes in quality near
the end with the title track and ‘Wesley Pantz’ containing some great moments,
from the rolling groove of the former to the trap n horn club-readiness of the
latter, if only that watery ‘melodic’ staccato instrument didn’t shit on
proceedings. Elsewhere ‘Rigor Mortis’ is quite good too, a modern EDM banger,
though it does sound like stock-music written for promos advertising an
upcoming ‘urban teen drama’.

Overall, though, this album is appalling and
superfluous. Some tracks are so bad they aren’t worth detailing (‘Hootenanny’,
‘Boondoggle’).
Simply, 12 tracks is far too long for something so derivative. Lifeless, bland, unoriginal and with only fleeting moments of good sound design or percussion going for it; my first Nanoloop or pure laziness? Decide for yourself I guess. Favourite track: Rigor MortisStream or download the album here.Thanks to Stephan Tul for proofing!

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Owned and written by Andrew Kilpatrick, with Alex Kelly around to help run it and Stephan Tul proofing, TWG was set up in March of 2012 and launched in July. The Waveform Generator brings the crème de le crème of chiptune influenced music to the world. This blog is where it all goes down, so check back frequently for more news as well as reviews, interviews, haikus and some sweet previews.